This is the first evaluation of the Anticancer Fund that focuses on identifying drugs to be combined with PARP inhibitors, or Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors, for the treatment of BRCA mutated breast cancers.

The initial purpose of the researchers was to identify ‘hard’ repurposing opportunities by using non-cancer drugs to treat BRCA-mutated tumours.

After performing a PubMed search on 293 non-cancer drugs, 73 drugs were considered to have possibly beneficial interaction with BRCA or PARP. A closer selection based on the abstracts revealed that 11 drugs were worthy of further research in breast cancer.

Further studies are necessary to select which drugs could be repurposed as single agent, in combination with PARP inhibitors, or in combination with other treatments in patients with BRCA-mutated cancers. Since none of the 11 drugs are currently investigated therapeutically in BRCA mutated cancer patients or in combination with PARP inhibitors, window of opportunity trials with biological endpoints represent one of the first steps to study their role with PARP inhibitors or in BRCA mutated cancers.